More union disclosure woes

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For the past five years, disclosure forms filed by the National Association of Letter Carriers failed to detail the group's specific lobbying activities.
AP Photo

Meredith McGehee, policy director at the nonprofit Campaign Legal Center, agreed that resources are a major issue and added that “lobby disclosure enforcement is notoriously lax.” She told the Center: “I highly doubt that anyone in the clerk’s or secretary’s offices is looking through these disclosure statements and making any kind of assessment whatsoever about the substance. That enforcement is nonexistent.”

Beth Provenzano, spokeswoman for the secretary of the Senate, told the Center that the Secretary’s Office of Public Records employs nine full-time staffers, four of whom focus on lobbying disclosure administration. Those four have a heavy workload, according to Provenzano: “The secretary received over 130,000 LDA [Lobbying Disclosure Act] documents during fiscal year 2009.” She said that the office applies “review standards” to the forms but is working to automate the compliance review process.

Still, Provenzano insists that the office takes its role seriously and has referred thousands of LDA cases — for a variety of potential infractions — to the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia for review. According to the Senate website, more than 4,000 cases have been referred to the U.S. attorney in the past two years. McGehee countered that she is aware of no major prosecutions for these types of lobbying disclosure violations to date. A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office responded to a Center inquiry by citing an April report from the Government Accountability Office; the report notes that “no civil actions or settlements with lobbyists have been pursued by the [U.S. Attorney’s] Office since 2005, although it is following up on hundreds of referrals each year.”

The House clerk’s office did not respond to Center questions, but a review of public disbursement records indicates more than 200 staffers worked for the office in the first quarter of 2010, not including student pages. None were listed specifically as working on lobbying disclosure compliance.

Even the lobbyists who must file find the procedures troublesome and confusing. Dave Wenhold, president of the American League of Lobbyists, said the system has improved but agreed that the two congressional offices that review filings don’t catch everything. And, he noted, there is not much training for lobbyist filers on what is expected of them. His group, he said, is “willing to work with anyone who wants to make the process easier” and hopes the offices can work with lobbyists to “help those screwing up not screw up.”

The Campaign Legal Center’s McGehee said that the letter carriers union case seemed like an innocent mistake, observing that it “sounds more like inattention or sloppiness than nefarious motives.” There is, she said, a distinction “between honest and willful mistakes.” But with groups feeling no fear of repercussions for misfiling, it’s impossible to be sure.

After all, she added, “nobody’s looking.”

Josh Israel and Aaron Mehta are staff writers at the Center for Public Integrity. CPI intern Gabriel Debenedetti contributed to this report.

Readers' Comments (53)

isnt it obvious .................................. nobody cares ...................Just keep our paychecks ,benefits coming ...................there are no Watchdogs just extensions of greed from our branches of government

Although some legislative tinkering may be required, it seems the laws are in place; all we really need are more government workers to perform legally required and vitally needed watchdog or oversight duties. Bush/Cheney led the Republican movement toward the disastrous policy of "calling off the dogs," of letting businesses and lobbyists regulate themselves. President Obama has been riding the brakes to stop this dangerous skid, but more must be done. We have ample evidence that there are far too many Americans and business CEOs who will sell out the national welfare for quick personal profit if we don't have watchdogs making sure they don't.

“They obviously don’t have the resources to comb through these thousands of reports on a quarterly basis,” Mason added. “If they had adequate resources, chances would be better that they would have found these.”

WE call it checking the level of greed. Doesn't matter who, they're all guilty if pursuing their own interest without regard of the consequence to the rest of the country. This has to change, WE need to bring integrity back into power.

If insanity is repeating the same thing and expecting a different result, what do WE call re-electing the politicians that caused all the problems in the first place with an expectation that they will fix them?

Don't Re-Elect ANY Incumbent Politician

"The care of human life and happiness and not their destruction is the first and only legitimate object of good government." --Thomas Jefferson

As long as the Democrats in Congress keep keep the taxpayer money coming to the public sector unions and the public sector unions keep getting Democrats elected, little indiscretions like lying about how the taxpayer money is being used to support Democrats will continue to be overlooked. It's like two vultures agreeing to share the carcass of the taxpayer.

But don't look for anyone to be prosecuted for this, anymore than the new black panthers who kept white people away from the polls in the last election were prosecuted for voter intimidation. It is now justice department policy to not prosecute anyone for voter intimidation if whites are the victims. I have no doubt that it will soon be justice department policy not to prosecute any group for fraud if they support the Democratic party - if it's not already. This is what our federal government has come to.

Sure let's have another federal agency to make sure the 2 fereral agencies are doing their job. and let's create another new one to make sure this new one does its job. Or, let's do away with the reporting and cut some federal jobs. Everybody else is losing positions and these far lefties want more government depts and expenditures.

We need to overhaul the tax code. If we would adopt a fair tax, then there would be little need for lobbyists. This is the most corrupt area of our system. Although, I am no fan of unions, I understand that these filings are tedious and require lots of man hours. The system is just too complex and costly.

I think this article just touched the tip of the iceberg. In Chicago, Unions are unbelievable powerful and corrupt. Like preventing illegal aliens, the federal government does nothing to stop the problem. Our federal government is itself corrupt and is now becoming evil.

Surprise!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! These guys are Lobbiest in the truests sense of the word. They have been around since the late 19th century doing their thing. They are paid big bucks to entertain the government people, they will disguise whatever they can get away with. Are these lobbiest free from prosecution? Are they really free from abiding to the laws that placed to watch over them. They have more lawyers on the books than administrative assistants. Do they not know the law themselves??? What correspndeance school they attend for their law degrees??? Nah, they knew what they were doing all along, they are the ones that should lose their licensing and get a job at a hamburger joint, where they can lessen the amount of ketchup to save money for their employers.

When are decent folks going to say "I'm not taking this anymore" go out and rent the movie "Network" and do something meaningful with your life and resist this unending element of greed and curuption amongs our ranks. Make congress police the laws that they establish. If they can't then find those who can.

Holder needs to go. In fact he should be investigated. He is selectively enforcing the law in a blatant partisan way, as predicted. That is not Justice. That is not American ideals. That is not "Hope and Change". That type of behavior is destructive to the nation.

This entire administration is one big criminal cesspool and the Chicago style corruption runs deep.

All Americans should deeply fear this government as a threat to liberty, life and freedom.

""The discovery that a second labor union has filed inaccurate lobbying reports underscores a more systematic problem acknowledged by special-interest and good-government groups — that the current lobbying disclosure system is troubled, confusing and lacks safeguards needed to ensure full compliance. ""

Unions do this because they know even if they get caught, all they do is say Sorry, and revise report. No Harm, No Foul. No Consequences.

Why all the Hoop-La? Everyone knows all union funds go to the Demo-ratic party members supporting the stick to any american not belonging to a union and to support congress passing laws to make taxpayers fund union functions, healthcare and retirements.

Just a though - Maybe Obama should turn complete control the Post Offices over to unions and make it a free of goverment business and see how long it would last. A LAUGH TO START THE DAY and postage is going up again.

I would love to see a thorough, and long, investigation into unions and union practices. Obama and Holder won't touch it because without the unions we'd all be saying "who or what's an Obama?" Unions have overstepped their boundary. It isn't 'cool' to be a union member unless you believe in threats, underhanded deals, crooked politics, and thugs.

I would love to see a thorough, and long, investigation into unions and union practices. Obama and Holder won't touch it because without the unions we'd all be saying "who or what's an Obama?" Unions have overstepped their boundary. It isn't 'cool' to be a union member unless you believe in threats, underhanded deals, crooked politics, and thugs.